Roland Topor - The Tenant

[dem bones]

Roland Topor - the Tenant [Translated by Francis K. Price] (Star, 1976: originally Doubleday 1966)

From the inside cover

THE TENANT
`Sitting very close to him, on a refuse pail, a very dark woman was staring at him with demented eyes. He uttered a strangled cry ... She fell backwards, screaming, and he screamed too as he fell on top of her. The refuse pail rolled over and its contents spewed out, almost burying them. The light went out.
'He rolled over on the ground, trying to extricate himself. Something brushed against his face as it fled. He finally suc­ceeded in getting to his feet. But in what direction should he run? Where was the button for the light now? Two claw-like hands encircled his neck and began to throttle him.
`His tongue was bursting in his mouth, and he could hear the gurgling sounds of his own voice. Then something hit him on the head, very hard, and he lost consciousness.
'He awoke in his apartment, stretched out on the bed. He was dressed as a woman, and he had no need to look in the mirror to know that he was carefully made up.'

'Written in the Kafka tradition – it is eminently worthwhile.' John Fowles
'As cold and quiet and deadly as a snake in the bed.' New York Tunes

Part I. The New Tenant.

Monsieur Trelkovsky, facing eviction from his Paris flat, needs an apartment in a hurry, so when a friend informs him of a vacancy in a block on the Rue de Perenees, it seems the answer to his prayers. The concierge gleefully informs him that what's left of the current tenant, Madam Simone Choule, is in a coma having thrown herself from the window. The doctors at Saint Antoine Hospital are not hopeful of a recovery.

The rent is prohibitive but Trelkovsky browbeats landlord Monsieur Zy into agreeing a discount. Worried that Madam Choule may yet defy the odds, Trelkovsky pays her a Hospital visit. The poor woman is virtually mummified. Also present at the bedside, Stella, a close friend of the patient. Curious to learn more about Simone, Trelkovsky invites Stella for a drink, a meal, a trip to the cinema ....

Simone dies that same night.

Trelkovsky gets off on a bad foot with his neighbours thanks to the rowdy behaviour of those friends and colleagues who persuaded him to hold a house warming party. Zy warns him that such conduct will not be tolerated a second time. The culprits tease him mercilessly about the incident to the point where he finds their company terrifying and deliberately avoids them.

From his window, Trelkovsky has a perfect view of the toilet across the courtyard. His casual voyeurism develops to an obsession. He invests in a pair of opera glasses.

If the remaining 80 pages live up to the first 40, this is a serious personal best reads of 2014 contender.

[Dr Strange]

Yes, this is a personal favourite of mine too. A brilliant depiction of "the descent into madness", and very readable (much more so than other European writers that he seems to get lumped in with, like Kafka).

[dem bones]

Aug 25, 2014 10:49:41 GMT Dr Strange said:

Yes, this is a personal favourite of mine too. A brilliant depiction of "the descent into madness", and very readable (much more so than other European writers that he seems to get lumped in with, like Kafka).

I've no way of knowing how faithful it is, but Francis Price's translation makes for the most luxurious flab-free read.

Late one night, two months after the funeral, Trelkovsky receives a visitor, Georges Badar, a friend of Simones who has recently completed his national service and is unaware of Simone's suicide. While Trelkovsky consoles him in the local cafes, a burglar ransacks the flat making away with the few personal possessions linking him to his past. Zy dissuades Trelkovsky from reporting the burglary to the police for fear of making him unpopular with the neighbours. It seems to the new tenant that it is already too late for that.

Part II. The Neighbours.

They are a rum lot, fast with their complaints should he so much as breathe after 10 p.m. and prone to settle disputes among themselves by violent means. A young single parent, persecuted by an elderly tenant, takes revenge by defecating outside every apartment bar one. Trelkovsky is spared because he refused to sign a petition seeking her eviction. Terrified that the blame will fall on him, he smears his own doorstep.

A chance meeting with Stella and her friends outside a cinema. Trelkovsky and Simone's closest friend pick up where they left off. This time his performance between the sheets barely qualifies as perfunctory.

Trelkovsky is stricken with fever. Weak and hallucinating, he is haunted by both the grinning phantom of Simone and a replica of his own face pressed against the window. "The eyes ... stared at him as if they were seeing a vision of unutterable horror." When, eventually, the illness passes, he throws on his clothes and looks out upon the courtyard. Workmen are repairing the glass roof shattered by Simone's plummeting body. They catch sight of him and laugh fit to piss. When he stands before the mirror he understands why .....

[valancourtbooks]

This was one of my best reads last year! It felt quick but was a very powerful book. I agree, he's much more readable than some of his contemporaries.

[Dr Strange]

Here are some cartoons by Topor - beautifuldecay.com/2014/06/23/illustrations-1960s-book-depict-people-absurd-masochistic-situations/

He also played the part of Renfield in Herzog's Nosferatu:

[Jojo Lapin X]

It seems not to have been mentioned, but Roman Polanski made a fine film of THE TENANT.

[Dr Strange]

I've definitely seen the film, but it was a long time ago and also a long time before I read the book - from what I can remember, I think the film is pretty faithful to the book and Polanski did a good job of recreating the mixture of black comedy and horror in the book.

[dem bones]

Cover of the NEL/ Four Square edition, 1968. scanned from Paperback Fanatic

A blow-by-blow account of the third and final part would be unfair on those who've yet to read the novel, which is just as well as The Previous Tenant is not lacking in incident and I would be unable to do it justice. It's fair to say that Monsieur Trelkovsky's persecution complex is by now firing on all cylinders and, while we anticipated the outcome way back when the concierge gloatingly informed him of Simone's fate - the diving man in the Star edition cover graphic is also a dead give away - the crushing inevitability of the tragedy only adds to the horror of the thing. Then again, could it be that Trelkovsky wasn't imagining things and he really was the victim of a conspiracy, that the neighbours drove him out of his mind for amusement, or out of spite, or a lack of other things to do? Lovely ending.